God, with such care, frequency and address, as to fix a sense of it deeply and practically in their minds. If then it can be shown how this may best be accomplished, we shall have an answer to the inquiry. Several particulars will, with this view, be submitted to the serious consideration of the reader.

1. Early instruct your children in the essential truths and duties of the Christian religion; and teach them to pray by some short and simple forms of devotion.

I am not ignorant that there are some who systematically oppose both parts of this direction. They say that children should not be told of truths and duties which they can but very imperfectly understand; nor be forced, as they term it, to learn a system of religion by rote; but be left to inquire and choose for themselves, when they have age and inclination which may qualify them to do it properly; and that to teach children to pray by forms, is to teach them to be formalists and hypocrites. All this, in my apprehension, is miserable delusion; or else it proceeds (as in fact I fear it often does) from a real hatred of religion. It manifests either ignorance, or a disregard both of revealed truth and of human nature. Who can tell at what precise age a child becomes morally responsible for his thoughts, feelings, and actions; or is capable of applying religious truth to the purposes of his salvation? And is a Christian parent to risk the death of his child, and his being judged at the bar of God, without any knowledge of his Maker and Redeemer, because the child is not yet fully able to understand many things connected with the Christian system? Children understand far more than they are usually believed to do, especially when they are early and carefully instructed. At a very early age they may understand as much as some adult Christians, of weak intellects but of unquestionable piety, do ever comprehend. VOL. V.-Ch. Adv.

Nay, there are unequivocal examples of children themselves, who, within the three first years of life, have given the best evidence that they savingly understood the fundamental points of practical Christianity, and have accordingly died in Christian hope and triumph. And where is the Christian parent, whom the very possibility that a child of his may be among this band of babes and sucklings, out of whose mouths the Lord ordains praise-where, I say, is the Christian parent, whom the hope of this should not animate to give his children the early instruction necessary to so desirable an event!

Beside, why should we not treat the subject of religion in this respect, as we treat every other subject? Does a child fully understand the principles of language, or of any other subject, when he first learns them? He certainly does not. But he commits the principles, notwithstanding, to memory; and then they are always ready for application as he advances in his pursuits. It is the very same in religion. He who has been early and carefully taught the principles of Christianity by catechetical instruction, is furnished with a form of sound words and a system of divine truth, which he will understand more and more as he advances in years, and the benefit of which he will feel to his dying day. "It may be a question," said an aged minister of the gospel," if I make a single preparation for the pulpit, without receiving benefit from the catechism, which I learned so early in life that the time of learning it I no longer recollect." Nor is this advantage peculiar to clergymen. It is common to all who have been thus instructed. By being early and systematically indoctrinated in the essential truths of religion, they are preserved from being carried about with every wind of doctrine, by which so many are injured; and when they are ened to a serious attenti 2 X

gion, they know their duty, and are preserved from that error and extravagance which are so often witnessed in the ignorant and uninformed, when they become alarmed for the salvation of their souls. One principal reason why the publick preaching of the word is so imperfectly understood and produces so little effect, is, that a large proportion of almost every audience have not been suitably prepared for it, by early catechetical instruction. Preachers constantly suppose, and indeed are in a measure obliged to suppose, that the people they address understand truths and principles which they do not clearly understand. They may indeed have some general and superficial knowledge of them, but they have not that accurate and familiar acquaintance, which is necessary fully to comprehend the meaning and feel the force of pulpit addresses.

The objection sometimes heard, that by teaching children a catechism you fill their minds with your own system and prejudices, and do not leave them unbiassed, to judge for themselves, has ever appeared to me either absurd or pernicious: absurd-because if you teach children at all, you must teach them what you know and believe yourself; or pernicious, because if you do not teach them, they will judge without knowledge, and under the influence of a corrupt nature will form opinions and contract prejudices against the truth, of the most ruinous and inveterate kind. To suppose that they will remain entirely candid and unbiassed, is contradicted by all experience. Opinions they will have; and if you do not teach them to judge right, youth and ignorance will cause them to judge wrong. They must be left to review their system of sentiments, when they come to maturity: and they have infinitely a better chance of ultimately becoming right, by correcting some unessential points which they may have learned amiss,

than if they had never learned at all. The truth is, that the unchangeable order of the Creator has linked the lot of children, in bodily make and constitution, in worldly circumstances and advantages, in intellectual powers and attainments, and in moral principles and habits, in a great measure with that of their parents. This should indeed make parents careful what they teach or do, because it is to influence their children as well as themselves. But to tell them not to teach or do any thing, that will materially affect their children, is to prescribe an impossibility. It is to set them at war with the laws of nature and the appointment of God.

As to making children formalists and hypocrites, by teaching them to pray and to use forms of prayer, it scarcely deserves a serious confutation. If care be taken, as doubtless it ought to be taken, to explain to them the meaning of the words they use, and the nature of the service they perform, there is no more danger of their becoming formal and hypocritical by this practice, than there is that adult persons will become so, by the habit of attending on publick worship and the other means of grace. So that the spirit of the objection is directed against all means and instruction whatsoever. On the contrary, it is a matter of general and undeniable experience, that the practice in question has the happiest effect, in preserving in the minds of children a reverence of God, a fear to offend him, tenderness of conscience, and a general sense of religious obligation; even where it does not immediately lead, as it sometimes appears to do, to a real spiritual intercourse with their God and Saviour. The happy effects of this practice have often been experienced by individuals advanced in life and immersed in worldly business, who have still preserved a sensibility of conscience in consequence of it, which at last, under the co-operating influence of provi

cause he has commanded them; that injustice and falsehood are wrong and deserving of punishment, solely because he has forbidden them. It is evident that these assertions do not readily accord with the natural and unsophisticated judgments of the human mind. We cannot believe, without doing violence to the clearest dictates of our understanding, that the fundamental rules of right and wrong are arbitrary and factitious; and that by an exercise of mere sovereign authority, their nature might have been completely changed. Indeed, the supposition is inconsistent and absurd. The constitution of our nature is a law to us, by which we are bound to love God and our neighbour, to practise justice and fidelity, and to avoid the contrary. To assert, therefore, that a law might have been given the reverse of this, involves the obvious absurdity that two divine laws might exist at the same time, the one directly contrary to the other. Hence it is, that the supposition above mentioned appears so manifestly repug

nant to reason.

To say that man might have been so constituted originally, that the law of his nature would have required him to practise injustice, fraud and falsehood, is to assert what is altogether inconceivable, and directly contradictory to all our notions of the unchangeable perfections of the Divine nature.

From a laudable concern for the interests of religion and morality, some have been led, in opposition to these different statements, to maintain, injudiciously it is believed, that the distinctions of right and wrong have their origin and foundation in the nature of things. They give this representation, from the conviction, I presume, that it most satisfactorily evinces the reality and immutability of moral distinctions. It is believed, however, that these important ends are secured in a more effectual and rational manner, by referring all our knowledge of right and wrong immediately to the will

of God, as revealed in the constitution of nature, and in the Holy Scriptures; and by maintaining that the essential distinctions of right and wrong, recognised in his revealed will, result necessarily from the infinite, eternal and unchangeable perfections of his nature.

The nature of things seems, in the systems of a certain class of theological writers, to denote something distinct from the Divine Being, and from the constitution and laws which he has ordained. After employing a number of pages to prove that virtue is not founded in the will of God, Dr. Dwight remarks, "There are persons who speak of the will of God as constituting the nature of things, when they only mean, that it gives them existence. These persons appear not to discern, that the nature of the thing is exactly the same, whether it exist, or is only seen in imagination. The Achilles of Homer, the Æneas of Virgil, &c., have all the same character, which real men, answering severally to the descriptions of them, would possess."

The considerations suggested in this passage are far from proving what the learned author intended.— For it is obvious to remark, that when we contemplate a fictitious person possessing the common faculties and qualities of human nature, whom the poet or the orator has invested with a certain character, we immediately conceive him to be under the law of God, and we judge of his character and conduct by that law. If we suppose him to be acquainted with the Scriptures, we form a judgment of him according to the Scriptures; if we suppose him to be ignorant of the Scriptures, we then judge of his conduct by the law of nature, by those notices of right and wrong which we believe God has afforded to all men. But in either case, we pronounce actions to be virtuous or vicious, solely because we conceive the person who performed them to be a subject of God's government; and we determine the character of his actions by compar

ering them with the law under which he is placed. In regard, therefore, even to an imaginary person, the law of God is the standard by which we judge, and not any supposed nature of things.

2. If the argument of Dr. Dwight have any weight to prove that virtue is founded in the nature of things, will it not equally prove that wisdom, power, and indeed every conceivable quality of matter or mind, are founded in the nature of things? Is it not as easy to invest an imaginary being with the attributes of wisdom, and power, as with that of virtue? Indeed, whatever be the object of our conception, a man, an animal, or a tree, the qualities which we attribute to this object are, ac cording to this argument, founded in the nature of things independently of the will of God.

3. The idea which we form of the virtue or vice of an imaginary being, constitutes an essential part of our conception of that being. The objects of our conceptions are nothing different from what they are conceived to be. When we form a notion of Æneas as pious and patriotic, his piety and patriotism are imaginary precisely as much as his existence. His piety has no more foundation in the nature of things,

than his existence.

There is no nature of things, or of persons, distinct from that which God has been pleased to bestow upon his creatures. The nature of the Divine Being is indeed independent and eternal. But every creature is dependent upon him for its nature as well as its existence-for every attribute and quality by which it is characterized. I am disposed to think that the human mind, with all its powers of abstraction and imagination, is incapable of forming a conception of the nature of things separate from the things themselves. The statement of Dr. Dwight bears a striking similarity to an opinion of some ancient philosophers respecting matter and forms. It was the doctrine of the Platonists, that of every spe

cies of things, there existed eternal and independent forms or ideas distinct from matter, which were the models according to which the individuals of the species were made.It has always been thought extremely difficult to comprehend how forms could exist without matter, according to the sublime philosophy of Plato; but I will venture to assert, that it is no less difficult to comprehend how the nature of things could be constituted, independently of the will of God, and antecedently to the existence of the things themselves, according to the theology of Dr. Dwight.

There are no eternal principles of truth or falsehood, right or wrong, distinct from the Divine Being. If the world were eternal and independent, the case would be different; there might then be eternal and necessary truths independent of him. But as he alone is eternal, nothing that is separate from him can be eternal. I know it is often said that moral truths are necessary and eternal in the nature of things, or in their own nature, without any reference to God, or to the constitution and order of things which he has established. In many instances, we have reason to think, this is a loose mode of speaking, designed merely to assert the reality, importance and immutability of the great principles of moral truth and duty. It is certainly an important truth that rational creatures are bound to obey their Creator. But this is true only on the supposition of their existence. Previously to the existence of rational creatures, it was neither true nor false. It is likewise an unquestionable truth that men are under obligation to promote each other's welfare, and to abstain from every kind of fraud and injustice. This truth, however, necessarily supposes the existence of man as a rational being, to whom a law has been revealed, and who is capable of employing his faculties for the benefit or injury of his fellow creatures.

It has already been remarked.